Keenan Thomas / Knoxville News Sentinel
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has high-tech plans in creating its public-private innovation districts, including a new center focused on national security.
The National Security Prototype Center is designed to be part of the larger Oak Ridge Innovation Corridor proposed by Chancellor Donde Plowman. The 60,000-square-foot building will be developed by a private business and run in partnership with Y-12 National Security Complex. Y-12 will give UT $20 million a year to cover its research there and pay for the lease.
Top students will get the chance to work alongside nuclear industry researchers, and the project deepens the university’s ties to Y-12 and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which form the core of America’s nuclear renaissance.
Other innovation districts are in the works, including in the Maplehurst neighborhood next to campus and the Peninsula district at the Research Park at Cherokee Farms. New buildings are planned for those sites:
- Next Gen Computing Building, a 90,000-square-foot facility at Maplehurst to be built in 2029
- Quantum Foundry and BioSciences and Engineering Buildings, two 140,000-square-foot facilities at the Peninsula to be built in 2030
- UT Medical Center Cancer Center, a 65,000-square-foot facility at the Peninsula to be built in 2030
Tech Square at Georgia Tech University is a model for administrators as UT builds out the districts. Each one is centered around a new technology, built with private investors and intended as vibrant live-work-play communities.
Innovation district buildings can be spun up more quickly than traditional campus buildings because they’re built by private developers and leased back to the university. The process opens up more research spaces and helps to attract top students and faculty.
“In a nutshell, that’s our plan for how we get the facilities,” Plowman said. “It’s a different way of doing it. It’s not us buying buildings ourselves.”
The Maplehurst Innovation District east of Neyland Stadium likely will focus on artificial intelligence, computing and data sciences, with the Next Gen Computing Building marking the first step into these fields. The Peninsula Innovation District continues UT’s collaborative work with industry leaders like Volkswagen and UT Medical Center.
Work on transforming the Maplehurt neighborhood has already started. Last year, the board approved an agreement for The University Financing Foundation to purchase a Maplehurst property at 814 W. Hill Ave. and hold it for five years. The foundation finalized the purchase of eight properties in 2025 for a combined $44 million, according to property records.
UT eventually will buy the properties when the spending is approved, and the work there can begin.
Plowman shared the update Feb. 27 at the UT System Board of Trustees winter meeting as part of her “Next Level” plans for the Knoxville campus, which focuses on high-tech research and hiring top faculty members. UT has 61 top faculty prospects in its sights right now in fields such as computing, health innovation and next-gen energy, she said.
The new research facilities and hiring “preeminent scholars” will help the Knoxville campus reach its 2030 goal to improve its research spending to $550 million, about $163.1 million more than UT is spending right now.
Keenan Thomas is the higher education reporter for Knox News.